Anger’s earrings flash, a hoop dangling from one lobe, a stud embedded in the other. He slams down his longbow, a definite sign that he’s pissed beyond his quota.
The rage god strides over to Merry and hauls her against him, clasping her in a hug that would shatter mortal bones, but only causes his soul mate to gasp and drop her neon archery. She winds her arms around him, and they remain like that.
Without warning, and without brains, Love and Andrew do the same. The goddess abandons her weapons and then leaps on him, and he catches her, both of them checking for bruises. Satisfied that the other is in one piece, their foreheads land together.
Seriously? Malice and Wonder, too?
By the time Sorrow checks on them, they’ve already puckered up. Wonder has vacated her branch and also relinquished her longbow in favor of a kiss that’s simultaneously vicious and tender. Malice grasps the roots of Wonder’s hair, and Wonder clutches his nape, the starburst scars on her hands flexing as she and her demon go at it. Their tongues wrestle so deep into the moment, they must be licking each other’s tonsils.
Somehow, the kiss is as sexy as it is irritating.
Ostensibly, affection is a contagion. These three nauseating matches prove that when opposites attract, they promptly turn stupid. It must suck to love someone that much, to become sick with worry, to become so protective that it leads to foolish actions. It makes zero sense, this sentimental pulp.
A grudge builds in Sorrow’s fists as she feels the weight of Envy’s gaze. As someone who gets off on all things graphic, that he’s not ogling the lunacy around them is a testament to the altitude at which he’s hovering. The fondling between each couple must be hard to see from such an elevated vantage point.
However, that doesn’t justify why he’s fixating on Sorrow. The knowledge produces an itch across her flesh.
She clears her throat, then does it again. Finally, the pairings untangle themselves, and they turn to face each other.
Cursing, Anger swipes his bow off the ground and jabs it toward Sorrow’s naked tits. “Do I want to know?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” she says. “I went swimming.”
“And unfortunately, I went in the same direction,” Envy remarks before jumping off his branch.
“Gracious, how romantic,” Merry swoons. “A rendezvous in the midst of our quest. A secretive, unbridled moment between—”
“We should be so lucky, dearest,” Wonder replies.
“Speak for yourself,” Envy objects.
“It wasn’t a mating ritual,” Sorrow stresses. “It was the passionate equivalent of a fender bender.”
Nonetheless, Wonder ceases listening. She tilts her head toward the stars and consults their shimmer, as if there’s something hidden within the constellations.
Malice coils a lock of her hair around his finger. A raspy tenor slithers from his lips. “Hmm. If you ask me—”
“Only if we have a death wish,” Anger bites out.
“—we should all be fighting naked. Nudity is so very nudist, so blunt, so wild. Imagine how much added damage we could do if we went as bare-assed as heathens. I’d like to be a heathen.”
“As opposed to your angelic self?” Love quips, wiping a dirt streak from her feather-white dress.
“Tsk, tsk.” Malice raises a finger, his long nail a talon stabbing the air. “Didn’t you know? Devils are angels in disguise. It’s the ones in white we need to be careful around.”
Love narrows her eyes. “I’ll show you careful.”
“I certainly hope you will.” Malice hitches a shoulder. “On the other hand, I couldn’t give a flying fuck about being an angel.”
“Guys?” Andrew questions while gazing at the trees.
Wonder hands Malice his leather sweater and jacket. “Get dressed, Demon.”
“Only for you, Wildflower.” Dutifully, he thrusts the first garment over his wavy head. When his face emerges, he waggles his brows at her, making Wonder suppress a grin.
“That goes for you as well,” Anger snaps at Sorrow, sweeping his hand up and down her nakedness. “Do something about this situation.”
“I second the motion,” Envy says.
“Guys?” Andrew repeats, raising his crossbow.
What’s his problem? Sorrow would ask, but the way Envy grimaces at her figure drives a knife through her vision. “Aww, I’m sorry,” she says. “Are you prudes talking to me?”
“No, we’re talking to the invisible goddess behind you,” Anger responds.
Envy puffs himself up, his chest inflating all over the forsaken place. “I’m no prude, I’m a whore. Get your facts straight. Now do as Papa Anger said and put on those sorry Gothic clothes of yours.” He gestures at her hair. “Without them, you just look like a grape.”
“And you look like an asshole, dressed in the suit of a prick, with the grin of a bastard,” Sorrow volleys with a fake smile.
“That’s more words than you’ve said in over two hundred years.”
“And it’s more words than you can spell.”
“Make them stop,” Wonder pleads to no one in particular.
“No! Look what’s happening.” Happily, Love indicates Anger, who palms his face in abject misery. Go figure, since the goddess has always enjoyed antagonizing him.
It would be effortless to point out how often Envy has relished peeling those “sorry Gothic clothes” off Sorrow. But that would remind him of their affair, an era that she doesn’t plan to reminisce about.
Whatever. Sorrow snaps her fingers. A cloud of badass black wraps around her body, outfitting in her in a vest, shredded skirt, and combat boots. Envy can think what he wants. She likes her wardrobe, and she doesn’t need anybody’s approval to wear—
Wait. Now it’s clear what’s got Andrew riled up. Lunar beams filter through the leaves, and brooks spill over mineral rocks, and bloated indigo toadstools swell among the flowers.
In spite of the darkness, Andrew’s snowy hair glows as vividly as Merry’s archery. “Guyyyyys?” he repeats, aiming at the forest. “You know how things happen in threes?”
When the group squints, he adds, “In fiction? Especially in fairytales? Things happen in counts of three. You know, like dragonflies that come out of nowhere, then children who come out of nowhere.”
“Clues in plain sight,” Malice and Wonder interpret.
“I was going to say repetition,” Andrew says. “Which implies foreshadowing.”
“So?” Anger and Merry question.
“Sooooo,” Andrew draws out. “I suck at math, but dragonflies and children only count as two.”
That registers on Love and Sorrow. They follow his lead and nock their longbows.
“Let me put it another way,” Andrew says. “Deities can’t have kids, right? But kids birthed from the stars can have mentors?”
Silence. Awareness. Idiocy.
Leave it to an erstwhile mortal to be equally creeped out and fascinated by their young visitors. Therefore, Andrew is the only one here who hadn’t officially let his guard down, who’d pointed out the obvious. They’ve been arguing like numbskulls, when they should have been fleeing, or at least targeting the woods, the thicket of which shifts in tandem to a group of swiftly moving bodies flying this way.
Whether innocent or not, those children had been exploring the forest, toying with a band of insurgents. And like all youths, they do have mentors.
Guardians who eventually go looking for them.
3
Sorrow
Which is why a longer, stronger, faster arrow lunges out of the forest.
It punctures a column of tree bark right beside Malice’s golden head.
They couldn’t have picked a worse god to target.
Malice howls and barrels toward the foliage, unlike the rest of them, who focus on the fully-grown deities springing from the bushes, and swinging from the beeches, and bounding across the canopy. Straight ahead and overhead, ground level and from above, they single-handedly spiral
down vines, and somersault from branches, and spin around hedges.
A kaleidoscope of arrows— sapphire, rhodolite, seashell, and more—slash the sky. As the archers move, the tails of their robes flare, woven of moonbeams. The skirts of their gowns fan like pinwheels, netted from starlight. The accordion folds of their pants billow, sewn from clouds.
Males and females with wreaths, jeweled clips, and strings of beads shimmering from their hair. Sorrow’s unacquainted with this lot, but that doesn’t stop them from recognizing the infamous insubordinates who’ve defied the Fates and made an enemy of their rulers.
The band of eight is outnumbered…three to one? Four to one?
Back-to-back, Malice and Wonder brawl with five of them.
Love and Andrew dodge targets, vaulting around one another and firing. With his marred leg and minimal training, he lags behind yet manages to stay on his feet.
Anger roars, nocks three iron arrows, and takes down a trio. The velocity of his strike blows them off their feet like bowling pins.
Merry combats another pair, each strike her own shooting star as she bounds across the glade, heading for a flat object isolated on the ground. Originally, Sorrow had questioned Merry bringing her skateboard on this crusade, even if it has been the goddess’s mode of transport since her youth, since her exile from the Peaks. But there’s no questioning now. Merry jumps onto the plum-colored board, its mauve wheels zooming across the grass as if on a smooth surface. Speeding and curbing around trees, she looses a series of neon projectiles, baffling her opponents and providing backup for her friends.
At one point, an attacker is so gobsmacked by the vision of a goddess on a skateboard that it’s effortless for Merry to kick the vessel into the air, spiral through an arc of arrows, and slam the board’s flat into the archer’s gut.
Sorrow gets flashes of this while battling her opponents, twirling her arrows and letting them fly, ducking a fist and ramming her elbow into a jaw.
At the whistle of another arrow, she freezes. Unbidden visions shred through her conscious.
A grenade soaring. Exploding fireworks. Helmeted mortals.
Howling. So much howling.
A soldier caught in a barbed net, his lifeless body contorted like a broken puppet. A vast and smoky field pitted with mines. Another boy wailing, his stomach shredded.
Sorrow’s pulse launches into her throat. It’s always the same, always the same, always the same.
Oxygen grates through her lungs. Her temple pounds. She wrenches her head from side to side until the memories dissipate, until the ethereal forest comes into sharp relief.
Her muscles scream, because this is too much, and there are too many of them. And in spite of a deity’s imperviousness to temperature, stress and exertion are exceptions, perspiration beading down her spine.
And Envy? He charges through a brook, his hair untethered and his clothes torn. He hollers for everyone to follow him. Otherwise at this rate, they’ll run out of steam.
Even Malice is sane enough to concur as he checks on Wonder, who scales another tree and hurdles through the woodland, racing parallel to him.
Love shoves Andrew on the back of Merry’s skateboard and then scampers bug-like up the same beech trunk. Through the branches, Love darts beside Wonder, both of them weaving in and out of the offshoots.
Anger is a tornado crashing through the brook behind Envy. The gods exchange a glance, which Sorrow interprets. They had plotted their course with diligence. Between those in the group who’d grown up in the Peaks, they’d hoarded everyone’s knowledge of the terrain, then mapped out a clandestine itinerary. The journey comprises of uncharted passages to their destination, which is close enough that it shouldn’t take ages to travel, but not too close that they can’t rearrange their plan in case of an emergency.
Yet none of them had foreseen a crisis this soon. Fates, they’d just gotten here!
From this woodland, the next segment of their quest is supposed to be the mineral caves. Anger knows that geography, which drills through the valley bluffs to the other side. But with chasers on their tails, it could get dicey. Anger would be able to lose them in the winding passages, but in the disarray, their group could easily get separated.
Anger nods at Envy, signaling a change of plans. Since this area is reachable from few anonymous trails, including the one from which they’d come, and the other to which they’d been heading, there’s not much of a chance their assailants had traveled via those outlets. They’d been out here with children, but only some of the older archers have the miens of Guides, while the rest appear to be Sorrow’s age.
Which means this mixed group had been frolicking merely for diversion rather than training. In any case, these attackers must have come from the only other option: the river. And if they came from the river, that means they’d cruised here.
Sorrow watches this possibility sweep from Anger’s visage to Envy’s. Whereas one god knows the mineral caves, the other knows the waterways.
“Follow the brook!” Envy growls.
Sorrow hops backward, taking up the rear while targeting their pursuers. She yelps when a hand snatches the back of her vest and hauls her around. She barely has time to glare at Envy as he pushes her ahead of him, and he takes her place.
What the fuck? She’d had backup under control!
There’s no point in arguing, unless she wants to slow them down. Their band sprints out of the woodland, away from the world of toadstools, willow and beech trees, and jade foliage tipped in amethyst. They track the brook into a misty passage, the eddies spilling into a canal. Walkways of scrolling woodwork thread around clusters of waterfalls, and the landscape darkens into burgundy fronds.
They’ve gained a few leagues from the pack of archers. Out of range, Envy breaks from the rear and bypasses everyone, leading them down a complex network of planks. At the end of one, the sky opens. The canal inflates into a river, its current reflecting the distant constellations and blooming cliffs.
Envy stalls at the edge. Love and Wonder drop from the branches. Merry skids her board to a halt, she and Andrew jumping off the platform. Anger, Malice, and Sorrow jog up beside them.
Knotted to the walkway, a boat bobs like a cork in the river. It’s shaped like a star, with a silver wood frame and a pole at its center that radiates light. On the floor, a door encases a cubicle for weapon storage, feasibly empty since their chasers presently brandish their archery.
Because most deities live on the coast, they often know how to sail, as mortals know how to drive. So yep, their adversaries had definitely cruised here.
Well, unless those archers are hip to the other secret trails, they’ll have to improvise and find another way back home. Either that, or swim.
Envy dives into the vessel and spreads his arms. “What the Fates are you beautiful people waiting for?”
Everyone leaps in after him. When Envy touches the pole it shudders and emits a white flame. Then they’re off, the river drawing them in. The archers and youths catch up, pausing along the walkways. The little ones gawk, having long deduced this isn’t a game while their companions draw and fire, the arrows spitting into the horizon and plunging into the water.
“Might want to hold on,” Envy warns, then wrenches on the pole.
The boat spins as if on a turntable, the revolutions averting strikes and throwing everybody off balance. Righting themselves, each rebel claims a position along the vessel’s circumference, nocking their bows and letting loose as they spin, each round blocking the attack.
Maybe it’s the remnants of their previous existence as humans, but Malice and Andrew blanch as though their latest meal churns in their guts. The water jostles, creating small waves that rock the vehicle. One of the adult archers dives into the river and swims, gaining at an impressive rate.
Despite his equilibrium, Malice throws his legs over the side and hurls himself into the abyss. “Malice!” Anger grates. “Get back here!”
“Pointless,” Wonde
r advises, ejecting a quartz arrow to defend her lover.
The devil’s golden head emerges, his arrow braced not three feet from the swimmer’s nose. Without pause, Malice shoots. The weapon surges into his adversary’s face, throwing the deity backward, knocking the wind out of him so that he floats in a stupor.
By the time Malice flops back into the boat, the swimmer has been rescued by one of his female companions. The vessel rounds the hip of a cliff and skims out of sight, with the righteous cries of archers and subsequent splashes receding behind them.
It feels like a rotten omen instead of a relief. Deities don’t tire quickly, so they may attempt to haul ass after the boat. With enough ambition, they’ll keep swimming until convinced there’s no chance of recouping the losses.
Or nature will randomly get in the way, as nature tends to do in any world.
After a dozen gasping breaths, their band slumps into a heap. Longbows and a single crossbow clatter to the floor. In the hemisphere’s dappled light, Wonder and Malice paw at each other in exhaustion. Merry falls into Anger’s arms, and they sit there, holding each other and staring at nothing. Love plants kisses all over Andrew’s awestricken face.
That is, until he keels over the edge and retches, the contents of his stomach splattering into the water.
“Andrew!” Love bleats, bending over him and rubbing his back.
Coughing, he bats his hand weakly and promises, “I’m fine. Just in need of therapy when this is over.”
Poor guy. As someone who’s transitioned from mortality to immortality, he’s been coping well, up to this point. He’s snarky, tenacious, and hardly the squeamish type, which Sorrow likes about him. But finding himself in this situation, fighting the same types of immortals that he grew up reading about from the safety of his bedroom, has got to be traumatizing.
Glancing around, it occurs to Sorrow that they’re all soaked, the sea having sloshed across the boat. They’re also worse for wear, riddled with abrasions and bruises.
Anger groans, his shoulder slouching at an odd angle. One of the projectiles must have hit hard enough to dislocate bone.
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